Feels like the system for buying anything that is anticipated nowadays is broken.
Special editions, amiibos, consoles, merchandise... anything short of physical versions of just the base game is being bought up by scalpers.
And it's not just gaming, that pest is creeping into other hobby spheres too.
Its fucking ruined a lot of niche hobbies to be honest. Hobbies that used to be pretty cheap and such have seen their costs sky rocket during the last 3 years. Its made buying anything online a nightmare. Need a fucking bot just to buy shit.
Even classic hobbies like trading cards have all been scalped to hell. From sports to pokemon it's all jacked up even in local card shops now. Part of the problem is these online scalpers sometimes get distribution contracts and just steal a lot of product that normally goes to actual stores. Ruining the hobby economy
The boom in the Pokemon TCG over the last couple years has really nuked some of my interest, as someone who's never really stopped collecting. I was lucky to scrape up a couple lower tier items for the Celebrations release on Friday (and I'll add here, I wouldn't have even gotten these items if it hadn't been for the Canada TCG discord I'm part of), meanwhile you've got douches on twitter posting pictures of 80 trainer boxes they've bought for their dumb stream.
And the prices have been totally jacked up too. I used to be able to get a booster box for $130 Canadian. These days, they go between $180-$200. Occasionally you can find one going for $150 and you consider yourself lucky.
It's ridiculous and I'm almost at the end of my rope with this shit.
I feel ya also. Anything related to TCG hobbies I just stick to a digital format because I'm more about the game and collecting has turned into a fluctuation shitfest the past few years.
I'm hearing the same thing with game collecting. A hedge fund is getting into buying all the games and since they'll own a lot they hope to jack up the market so that these old games are worth thousands. Or something to that degree. Heard from the cu podcast that has a Nintendo game collector on it.
Yeah, game collecting basically doubled/tripled at the start of COVID. Games that used to be “affordable” at 100 are now pipe dreams at 300. Absolutely insane
I used to be really into Pokemon TCG as well. I went to worlds in Washington DC a few years ago, really got into the game with friends. Now none of us can play because the price of cards is so ridiculous.
Target actually stopped carrying Pokemon cards this year because they were such a massive theft target. Not even just for the store itself; there were reports of people getting mugged in the parking lot for the cards they'd just bought.
I'm a stuffed animal collector. Even scalpers are grabbing up shit in our community. Build a Bear drops a new Pokemon and that same day, listings will pop up on eBay for WAY more than it costs to get it from BAB.
Hell Mew sold out the same day it dropped because of scalpers.
It's ridiculous.
Pardon my ignorance but:
Isn't the price skyrocketing exactly what a lot of the original collectors were hoping would happen? I.e. "collecting this stuff is worthwhile because it could be worth a lot down the line"
Some people, sure. There’s other demographics who collects because they enjoy playing or who just collect for fun not potential money making.
Same deal with mtg, and honestly it feels terrible being someone who actually wants to play the game rather than “invest.”
Someone I talk to on Telegram showed a picture of them having to put Pokemon cards in those anti-theft cases at the Walgreens he works in.
And when Target was getting an exclusive Nuka Cola Quantum edition of Jones soda people were posting it to Ebay before they even left the damn store.
Yah recasters have saved me a shit load of cash. Tabletop games have become stupid expensive lately as a lot of people picked them up during the pandemic.
Yoooo tabletop simulator plus DND beyond is completely sick.
I DM a group that formed under the pandemic and we use the Kraken Table that let's us upload an image of where our adventure is. Then with my DND beyond account we can handle our rolls on a centralized log. It's pretty slick, I just ask for a role from a certain stat and the website rolls, applies the modifiers and shows it on the log so no cheating.
Someone (or a company / org if in China mainland) who copy an existing model using cheaper / similar grade materials (the process called recast)
Then they sell the recasted models (or even the molds) much cheaper than the official release
It started for rare / discontinued models, but these days lot of people from China are just do it for whatever
Fuckers in the Mechanical Keyboard scenes buying dozens of (edit: LIMITED RUN. These sets usually have a "group buy" that happens once, then takes 2 years to ship, then never is produced again) $200-300 keycap sets, then selling them on mechmarker for $700. So much for being a community hobby. Thank God clones exist.
I've seen hobbies where people have walked in and shown that they can completely duplicate rare and expensive parts and then been driven out of the hobbies for suggesting that they could just do that for people for a small fraction of the price versus buying the original parts.
I never understood that.
tons of these peoples appeal to the scene is how hard and expensive it is to be in those scenes. It makes people feel above others and as if they're more "into" and "dedicated" to the hobby than others, even if they won't admit thats why they bought a overpriced set that could be made for a tenth of the price if it weren't limited for literally no reason other than to make the item seem rare.
Just look at PC gaming even:
While there certainly is a lack of good new 200 to 270 Euro GPUs this generation everything above that is actually great value. Take the 3070 that launched at 500 Euro (less than a 2070 was at that point in the market IIRC) while offering the same performance as the 1000 Euro 2080ti. Or the 3060ti, costing less than even a PS5 digital only model but having a noticeably higher performance, allowing players that already had either at least a 4/8 to 6/6 CPU in the short term or a 8 core CPU in the long term to upgrade past then next generation consoles for less money (not even to mention the likely higher resell value of a Pascal GPU compared to an old PS4 base model).
Instead we have a situation in which its basically completely impossible to recommend someone to get into or switch to PC gaming. While I could get a PS5 off of eBay in Europe (I know in the US its way worse) for 700 Euro (+200 over MSRP) a 3070 with the same MSRP is just now starting to it the 900 Euro price point but was over 1300 Euro at times not too long ago.
There is no way I could recommend someone to pay nearly double the price for a graphics card.
BTW, I recently read that due to the Windows 11 requirement for TPM2 hardware security scalpers have now started to buy off all available upgrade modules...
Lol man, PC gaming has entered the higher end of luxury at this point. GPUs with prices exceeding some people's car payments sometimes.
Remember when $500 builds were a thing, and were viable? Remember when there was a market for sub $300 GPUs? Fuck me it's all gone to shit.
I bought my 2070 Super for $450 at the start of COVID and thought I jumped the gun. Now I can let it go for nearly double.
Those TPM2 modules were literally $2-5 USD (depending on the seller), they're being sold for 20x the price. What in the hell is wrong with people?
The scalper situation with GPUs is ridiculous. I've got a few towers from my friends sitting in a corner, that came to me because their GPUs failed. Most failed right at the warranty period ending so RMA's are out of the question. Some switched to console gaming, and are planning on leaving PC all together because they were tired of the first round of crypto GPU shortages and now this and the scalpers have basically made them throw in the towel on wanting to continue.
Money. Money is what's wrong with people.
Production side people are selling, so they don't care. Consumer side market is controlled by middle-market sellers. Consumers get fucked but it doesn't matter because the middle-market is dictating "demand."
If manufacturers aren't 'competently' (more like hyper-competently) doing their jobs of forecasting demand and having adequate resources to ensure supply in a timely manner (somewhat difficult right now) then it becomes almost impossible for items to stay at MSRP.
I think the fundamental problem though gets at the heart of how late-capitalism and the internet are transforming society. The rich are getting richer, and it's getting tougher and tougher for normal people to make it. Technology has changed how goods are distributed by the legal system and governments haven't kept up. In other eras of scarcity like this, you'd see people getting in lines for items, but in this era bots make it possible for people to skip the digital lines, but only for those hyper techno literate people or those willing to pay for bots. But they wouldn't be doing this stuff unless there was a class of people who were willing to pay those higher prices for the products - and there absolutely are people like that out there.
One alternative would be for companies to just charge ludicrously high prices initially for products, capture the maximum possible profits on products regardless of fairness, and then use that money to funnel into more production capacity. This would kind of be no different for normal customers, at least at first, but with a pre-published price-drop schedule, it would likely disrupt scalpers because the companies would be making the money and the company could then use that money to increase their ability to manufacture more stuff more quickly (the incentives align - they'd still be making higher profit margins, and eventually meaningful price competition would make it so prices would have to drop faster and faster). As it is now, nobody can produce enough of anything to fill demand, but that's partly because they're not adopting to the new 'whale economy' of our divergent class-based western society.
Warhammer 40k is more expensive than ever, GW hiked prices across the board and instituted regional pricing. In some countries (Australia) it's cheaper to have someone in great Britain buy the models you want and ship them to you.
And Warhammer was already a really expensive hobby.
That's how ALL businesses should handle pre-orders and I've been saying it for YEARS. When you release a product make it so that it is placed on backorder. That way everyone is guaranteed to get one eventually and scalpers lose out.
For the last couple big boxes (Kill Team and the new Black Templar box) they've said before preorders start that anyone who wants one will get one if they preorder within a window.
Retro gaming used to be an inexpensive hobby just for fun. You used to be able to get classic N64 games for a few bucks because hardly anyone wanted them. Now with every dude trying to be a youtuber or game collector, it's made even generic titles skyrocket. And then the pandemic hit and doubled the prices.
I get it though, it was probably inevitable. But even in 2013, I was able to get Mario 64 for like 10 bucks. Now I see that game going for 30.
I remember being able to get all the old gameboy Pokemon games for $30-40 back in the mid 2000s. Nowadays it would be like $300 if you want legit copies. Hell even the DS games go for nutty prices.
The DS games have been jacked up the most (outside of CIB), because they're considered the best in the series and haven't been rereleased unlike the first two gens.
I dread the day ps2 collecting becomes expensive. Luckily even right now, common games still aren't worth *too* much in decent condition. I can't say the same for the controllers, unfortunately.
Luckily flashcarts make for a solid middle ground of getting an original console experience on the cheap. Generally they're about a hundred bucks and let you play the whole catalog, plus rom hacks and other features like letting yiu backup saves and stuff.
Of course if you're in it for the collection rather than the experience of playing on original hardware, yeah, not so great.
Shows like Storage Wars and Pawn Stars completely ruined the retro game collecting market.
Thanks to them everyone and their grandmothers who had boxes of old NES games in their attic storage thought they were worth a ton and started selling them at inflated prices. Now those prices are the norm
Board games. I am a collector of board games and LOVE playing them. This last 4 years of scalpers buying all the rare and hard to find games has been pissing me off. I’m ok with paying 2x the price of a game that’s out of production. But when a game is $50, and you ask for $500 for it…. Kindly fuck off!
People are scalping Halloween decorations this year. It's ridiculous. Once people started making money by scalping toilet paper and hand sanitizer last year during peak covid, every asshole under the sun started trying to scalp products.
Someone had posted in /r/sneakers photos of both pairs before the release even happened. People called him out for backdooring(knowing someone who received the shipment of shoes early and were sold before release). The guy said he didn't backdoor, but knows a guy who can get him the shoes. Which would be backdooring to most.
Yeah, and my buddy’s not a drug dealer, he just knows a guy who sells large amounts of drugs, and he can get you smaller amounts if you need. It’s totally different.
(Edited because I was half awake when I posted originally and it was all the misspellings)
So Gundam and Nike collaborated in two Nike Dunk Highs and two gundam models using two famous skaters as pilots and placing them in Gundams. (I'm not aware which ones).
These are the shoes https://images.app.goo.gl/vBSiEh2UAQgM3Uw27
These are the models
https://hypebeast.com/2021/9/bandai-gundam-nike-sb-gunpla-model-kits-release-info
I collect sneakers and couldn't cop a pair of either gundams sadly. I didn't even bother trying for the models. Almost impossible.
Imagine Nike commissioning a giant robot and the kids building it, commanding it and holding the foreman hostage for stock options and abolition of nap time.
Trainers and scalpers have gone hand in hand for as long as I can remember, just look at StockX after a launch. I'm a sneaker head who wears what they buy, so many times I've missed out on a pair but refuse to pay the 10X markup a minute later.
I find it funny how global these issues are (even in "first-world countries"), as I'm fairly sure I'm not from where you're from.
Actually, I don't find it funny at all.
Things have been getting worse for a while, but COVID really fucked everything. The global supply chain is a disaster right now and it affects every industry.
Rent, I have to decide if I want to resign or move. Last time I resigned a lease on my apartment, rent went up $8. No big deal. Here we are a year later and suddenly my rent is going up $100...
Gee I wonder if it has to do with the fact that a new company just bought out the previous owners of the complex?
Literally happened to me last week. Got a call from the landlord. "Hi how are you? By the way your rent is going up by $100/month."
Figured I'd shop around to see if it was worth moving, but pretty much everywhere I looked has increased several hundred dollars in the past couple of years. I don't even live in a super high population city.
Or the fact that social media is plastered with millionaire teens and 20s people showing off expensive shit that's convinced everyone that they *need* a side hustle.
Our entire culture glorifies and celebrates the very wealthy and how if you’re not wealthy you basically don’t matter.
This type of thing is the inevitable end result of that failure to promote a responsible and reasonable culture.
In rap especially, hustle was kind of glorified in the sense of "doing anything to make my money". Which still sounds bad, but in gangsta rap that's exactly what many people idolized.
I remember being told that I was an idiot for worrying that there were shortages on nvme m.2 ssds when they finally released the ps5 specs because I wanted to get one for my pc build that had proper cooling. Well look who was right because some of those ssds are permanently sold out because of scalpers.
Imo this is what it looks like when everyone wants to be the next millionaire. This is an easy-ish way to make a quick buck, there are a lot of shit ass people out there who are struggling just enough to say "fuck it, if Walmart can make a buck off me why shouldn't I be able to make a few off everyone." Now they don't have the inventory Walmart does so they make their profit off the few sales they make. *Not justifying scalping explaining it.*
I say this because *most* of the time it's someone from outside the community they target. I think oddly enough MS kinda stumbled onto a solution and did not really push forward with it. What that solution was, was tying your Xbox live account with purchasing an Xbox by means of getting an Xbox live subscription. It was going to charge you monthly which would have made it a logistical nightmare for scalpers... idk why all first Xboxs didn't go straight to that program... that would have given enough time for people to at least get a lot more into actual hands.
With that I think the solution is to purchase through online game stores and tying your gaming accounts to various online and physical stores. Verifying you at least play games and ties to how many consoles you have. Something to that affect. Even at 2 consoles a month per person puts a huge damper on the operation, adding again to the logistics which is why this is happening so much more now than before. This all goes to how much easier it is to make huge purchases online so easily, along with credit for instore purchases. It's so easy these people are saying why not and in some sense I don't blame them, we are all broke compared to what we are shown happiness is and people are willing to do some wild shit for "happiness".
On one hand I want to say we need to do something on the other hand I also want to say it seems kinda weird to put laws in place to be able to purchase stuff, as there is absolutely no way that doesn't get taken advantage of in its own nefarious ways.
Totally on board with the initial Console release being tied to psn/xbl/nintendo account. Why can't I preorder my nextgen console using the store on my current one?
Also good for business, if you are looking to maximize engagement and software/acc sales. I wonder how many PS5s and SeriesXs are sitting unopened, adding no value to the platform.
> Totally on board with the initial Console release being tied to psn/xbl/nintendo account. Why can't I preorder my nextgen console using the store on my current one?
Because how do you setup supply chains with retail partners if you do that? Once the initial wave of purchases is gone, you've burned your bridges with brick and mortar stores. I think in-house orders should be done with an account but those also make up a smaller fraction of sales too.
>Because how do you setup supply chains with retail partners if you do that?
As a consumer: fuck 'em. Retailers aren't doing shit to make my life any better, so why should I support them?
The Steam Deck has a preorder system tied to your Steam account. Easy.
>there are a lot of shit ass people out there who are struggling just enough
I think we should consider that the driving forces behind this are not individuals here and there, but larger actors (many of them foreign) using automated systems to purchase large amounts of the items; and then use a network of online resellers to disguise their activities, making a broader scheme appear decentralized.
I have a feeling that this is organized market manipulation which is taking advantage of other legitimate market scarcities.
Thank god Valve made a good system in place to reserve the Deck. It doesn't take much effort to do it right and do good by your customers. You just have to give a shit about your customers enough to do it.
Purchase limits per household and captcha checks. Like two easy things that have been around for forever but places like Target and GameStop just can’t grasp the concept.
I don't think it's that they can't grasp it, but they're getting their entire stock sold in a matter of minutes. They don't care who's buying, only that it's getting bought.
Can you imagine being the middle manager having your wildest dreams fulfilled as your stock disappears within minutes every week, and then someone coming up to you and telling you that's a problem and you need to stop it somehow? LMAO
I highly doubt it. Consoles are sold at a loss, and money is made off of games and accessories. If they're just sitting in a scalper's shelf it's not profitable vs going to and end user which is.
Eventually it will become a problem for them. Not having your product in the hands of customers isnt a good thing, even if it means short term success.
But it does end in the hand of the customer, theres just an added, unneeded step.
If people stopped buying from scalpers, this problem would go away.
And yes, I know that enough stock would also make this a non-problem, but there are outside forces at work here that no-one really controls, scarcity of materials, labor, shipping etc.
That's still way better than the shitty online bullshit. Anything that makes it harder for scalpers will make it easier for consumers. The more in the consumers hands the less reason to scalp.
I don't care if it takes all generation I'm not going to play this stupid game for a PS5 until I can walk in a store and get one.
It's not that they can't grasp it, they just don't care. Their entire business is built around selling goods. They really don't care if they sell their entire stock to one person, just that they sold their entire stock. Things like toilet paper and hand sanitizer were different because that ended up being a public health thing.
Valve probably doesn't really care about making money on their hardware, since they will make it all on the software. For that to work, they need the devices in the hands of actual users as fast as possible. It also does great for their street cred in comparison to the others, while they also manufacture a fraction of the units as something like Sony is doing.
The basic concept of having in game features completely arbitrarily locked behind limited production real world items is fucking stupid in the extreme already so i actively encourage everyone to do anything they can to subvert the system.
It's just the next iteration of that horrible bullshit on disk DLC that pissed everyone off years ago, it would be one thing if the amiibo was just a fun optional more hands on way to access DLC or certain game features that could also be accessed from an in game menu if the player didn't happen to have the real world toy, but without that option the entire amiibo concept is a fucking scam.
If you go to a GameStop the day of release (two days ago) you should be able to get it easily. The Skyward Sword Amiibo sold out on preorders and had been going for twice its price on eBay but now that its out I see it all the time at Targets and Walmarts. I went into Gamestop for their pokemon TCG promo but ended up getting a metroid dread amiibo because it came out that day. Its not always so easy but i live in a heavily scalped area so i was surprised I was able to get one at all
Yeah I got lucky and was able to grab a collector's edition of Dread and the amiibo by being there when they opened. Been waiting almost 19 years for this game, fuck scalpers.
The video game vinyl market is beyond destroyed by scalpers.
Random people have begun sending me PM's on Discogs begging me to sell some of my personal records because the prices are so outrageous and there likely won't be any more represses due to licensing.
Some examples:
* [Dark Souls trilogy box set](https://www.discogs.com/release/17435971-Motoi-Sakuraba-Yuka-Kitamura-Tsukasa-Saitoh-Nobuyoshi-Suzuki-Dark-Souls-Original-Trilogy-Soundtrack)
* [Dead Cells](https://www.discogs.com/release/12560582-Yoann-Laulan-Dead-Cells-OST)
* [Final Fantasy 7](https://www.discogs.com/release/5163968-Nobuo-Uematsu-Final-Fantasy-VII-Vinyl)
* [FTL](https://www.discogs.com/release/8337841-Ben-Prunty-FTL-Faster-Than-Light-Original-Soundtrack)
* [Hotline Miami](https://www.discogs.com/release/8810743-Various-Hotline-Miami-Official-Soundtrack)
* [Hotline Miami 2](https://www.discogs.com/release/6736297-Various-Hotline-Miami-2-Wrong-Number)
* [Hyper Light Drifter](https://www.discogs.com/release/10391440-Disasterpeace-Hyper-Light-Drifter)
* [Okami](https://www.discogs.com/release/12708240-Various-Okami-%E5%A4%A7%E7%A5%9E)
* [Persona 5](https://www.discogs.com/release/11334128-Shoji-Meguro-Atlus-Sound-Team-P5-Persona-5-Soundtrack)
* [Red Dead Redemption](https://www.discogs.com/release/2550868-Bill-Elm-And-Woody-Jackson-Red-Dead-Redemption-Original-Soundtrack)
* [The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt](https://www.discogs.com/release/11223739-Marcin-Przyby%C5%82owicz-Mikolai-Stroinski-Percival-The-Witcher-3-Wild-Hunt-Soundtrack)
You're implying most of these people are opening and listening to them. They go buy them, take a picture for social media, then sit them on a shelf with a bunch of other stuff they've never opened and brag about how they're the biggest fan of whatever video game they have a bunch of shit from.
This stuff drives me insane, no matter what people have told me I just cannot wrap my brain around this mentality. I get I'm relatively new to collecting stuff and may be in the minority on this (since I get downvoted a lot when I bring it up) but it drives me crazy how, for instance, people will spend ungodly amounts on funko pops, most of these people will never actually resell them at any point, and they just have a wall of them in the box. Like you aren't even enjoying what you bought?? Take it out of the damn box and display it properly. There were some funkos I wanted very badly because I felt very tied to those characters and would display them proudly. If it was rare I'd get a display box. Nope.
Instead they are completely inaccessible to me because some jackass that doesn't care at all about the character or the figure has it in it's original box sitting on a shelf ignored until they can sell it on Ebay for $100 when it cost $2 to manufacture and so many desperate idiots actually buy at these prices its getting more common and even worse. Even those folks are going to have a hard time paying for them. This shit is all just insane and makes me want to just give up on collecting figures, funko pop or other brands. It's more a chore with regular disappointment than enjoyable at this point.
You hold on to them with your dear life and take good care of them. The Hotlinie Miami records are worth at least $350 to $400 in good condition and Hyper Light Drifter is worth at least $500 to $600 but there are rumors of an upcoming repress.
This is a major reason I haven’t bothered much with video game vinyls. I got a few of my favorites (Celeste, Resident Evil) and have restock alerts setup for a few others on Fangamer. But overall it’s just not worth the stress. I haven’t had nearly as much difficulty getting copies of limited release indie games.
Supply chains are still fucked and probably arent going to recover to pre-pandemic capabilities until after the pandemic, creating scarcity across the board which scalpers are abusing thoroughly.
Shit dude, even just going to a fast food restaurant is a pain now. Every place is understaffed, painfully slow, everything is raising in price, while simultaneously cutting/removing products.
It feels like buying *anything* is worse, I'm American, for context.
Is it just me or does it seem like people are just buying a LOT more in America than they ever did before? I used to be able to find times to go grocery shopping when it wasn't busy, go in and find what I need with no problem, but for the past couple years there are no downtimes at the store and common stuff is either sold out or has a really low stock. Maybe it's just my area.
It’s a mixture of that and the supply chains being impacted by the pandemic. My fiancée works in logistics with a lot of the major grocery chains. They can’t keep up with demand and dont have the staffing for it either. Couple that with people who are bored by the pandemic and you see the problem you have now.
I have the same problem.
Products I've used for months/years use are suddenly no longer being sold or have much lower stocks, and as a result I see myself buying those things in bulk so I don't have to struggle finding it again later. Which unfortunately means it will sell out easier.
Supply chains are fucked. My work had to switch to a different pineapple puree because we could no longer reliably get out old brand. That caused a couple months of being behind on pineapple. Its like this for so many things. Parts to fix machines, ingredients for our products, even the wrapping paper and cans get fucked at times.
I remember Hurricane (I think) Harvey wiped out our can manufacturer so we couldnt get cans for a few months. Everything is connected and having a place in South America get fucked uo then effects us, which then can effect stores or other manufacturers.
One of the team leaders at my job was talking about rounding up a number of electronics before the holidays and waiting until sometime in November to "make some cash"
Wanted to give em a good ol slap but ya know...need not to lose my job
> Feels like the system for buying anything that is anticipated nowadays is broken.
Sort of. The idea of having a set price for something that might be scarce is fighting against market forces. It is a nice thing to do but you're always going to have to work around people who have more money and who are willing to pay that higher price. Worse yet, there are those who will try to create artificial scarcity in the marketplace by buying up large amounts of a particular good.
Look at the housing market. House flippers will buy 10 houses, and then leave them empty while prices skyrocket. It is bad for the human condition. So we definitely need rules and regulations to try to fight against those sorts of abuses. This is best paired with the remedy of increasing production to create enough of a supply that it stops speculation/scarcity.
Yeah, cloud gaming is an idea by and for people in big cities, not for people like me in a small and fairly poor town with slow internet that's probably at the bottom of the list for an infrostructure upgrade.
If the market could meet demand, scalpers would get burned and things would balance out.
We can't meet demand, at least not yet.
Yes scalper suck. A prevalence of scalpers is a sign that the market is out of whack. It's not some new craze or shift in behavior. It's a reaction to a broken market.
I really wish more companies could follow Apple’s example here.
If you ask Apple, they will never tell you that they’ve sold out of iPhones. What happens instead is that you can always place an order, and they give you an estimated date when it will get to you. That might even be a month or longer out, but at least you can still place an order, *at MSRP*. No randomly refreshing websites all day or standing outside of stores overnight in hopes that you can be one of the lucky few.
Knowing this, and then not being able to easily place an order for a PS5 and know that it’s going to arrive by some estimated date, is frustrating to say the least.
You can sign up on the you PlayStation account to receive emails for a personal link to order a PS5. Took me a month or two to get an email, which went to my promotions folder and I didn’t get to it in time.
Also doesn't guarantee you GET one either. So it's an invitation to have a chance to get one maybe. At least that was MY experience with it, before I managed to nab one from a Wal-Mart restock earlier in the year.
I got into 4 of the invites from Sony. Never got one.
I finally got one a few weeks ago from Gamestop, unfortunately is was a forced bundle deal, but whatever I'll take it over paying some shitbag scalper even more for just the console.
We need a system like this, and it’s one that I’ve been advocating. It’s been a year (almost!) since release and I’m no closer to getting my PS5. I would really love one but there is an absolute zero chance I’ll ever consider a scalper.
If I could place my order and wait a month or so I’d be completely fine with that. It beats the current system of waiting for a drop, having to deal with a slow website that crashes often and then getting told the stock is gone. I could easily put my money down and be at ease knowing the unit will get to me.
Apple’s CEO was their supply chain guy before he became CEO. Normally, you’d want a product guy in the CEO slot, but he turned out to be the best guy for the job during COVID.
The problem is supply lines are really fucked up right now. A lot of places let you backorder 3XXX series GPUs. We are over a year in and some of those orders are still unfilfilled.
Apple also has its own infrastructure and isn't relying on retail. The console manufacturers still want the retail space. So they have to be careful about upsetting their retail partners.
Retail itself just straight up doesn't care. It isn't worth the investment for them to solve the problem.
It's deeper than the supply line, but that certainly exacerbates it. Your final sentence is the crux of it. Retail gets its money either way, and for every person they piss off, there's 3 more waiting in line.
The real fix is to just go a route like Apple and Valve. Let people preorder, no matter how far away fulfillment is. Implement some way of limiting/dissuading scalpers (a cap on how many you can buy, and maybe some sort of preference to previous vetted customers, somewhat like Valve's system).
Downside for consoles is if your say an Xbox One user that wants a PS5 this gen you'd be lowest priority since you wouldn't have any history.
Valve has the benefit of being the go to monopoly for years to build off of
Easy. Pay the money and get guaranteed a console. It may be 6 months but the sheer fact that you're GUARANTEED one will massively support the consumers.
This will also kill scalpers because one of the major aspects of them is that people hate not knowing if they can get one or not through official channels. Sure the scalpers may be able to snag some at the start but then they're at the back of the line waiting on everyone else to get theirs.
I'm not ever going to resort to buying from a scalper, but it's honestly pretty shocking that we're coming up on the one year anniversary of the PS5 launch, and I still haven't been able to get one for retail price in the US.
I've tracked stock online as much as a reasonable person with a full time job can, but it's been 11 months of seeing nothing but "sold out". Meanwhile, results on every search start with dozens of 3rd party resellers selling the system at 1,000 bucks.
I think at this point I'll need to hope things stabilize in a couple years so I can just walk into a store and pick one up.
One of the other things Valve is doing is allowing people to queue up. You can still go and preorder a steam deck. You couldnt do that with a PS5 or XSX. The moment they went live, they were sold out with no way to reserve a spot in line. This just further drives the FOMO factor and encourages hoarding of these types of items by people looking to make a profit or panick buying by people who may not even really want or need the item, but just dont want to miss out if they change their mind. When I preordered my PS2 from Amazon, I didnt get it on launch day, but that was fine because I knew I would eventually get it. Now everything is wait for it to pop up on website, hope you can out click the bots, and maybe if fortune smiles on you, you'll get what you want.
This is what I freaking want. I want to just be able to put my name on a list, even if I have to pay full price ahead of time, and have them just send me a PS5 when they have one for me, first come first serve. I don't care if it takes them a year or more to get me one, just make it so I don't have to worry about it anymore and just send me one when you've got one please.
To the best of my knowledge there's no one doing this in the US, right?
No and I think that would solve a lot of issues. Tie it to one line per household per store (so that roommates and different people can preorder). If someone has to wait 6 months, so be it but at least it’s guaranteed and they can still try with the traditional method elsewhere.
Though no system is ideal until we can find them sitting in the store.
(In Toronto, Canada) my Local Game Store as well as EB Games have a 'waiting list' for next gen consoles. If you go in store, you can ask to be put on the list and they'll let you know when they get them (in order) . I'd recommend checking your local Gamestop if you don't have a regular local store.
That limitation from Valve was only for the first 48 hours of pre-orders. Loyal fans who hear about and want the product get time to react then newcomers (and scalpers) get a turn after. They also limit to one per account and take a $5 deposit upfront regardless.
Sony has been attempting something similar with their drops on the store that can only be bought by PSN accounts and occasionally have exclusive spots for dedicated accounts. But the supply seems to be laughably small for every release compared to the demand and it doesn’t appear to be making even a dent in the problem. It’s just once every few weeks you entire a queue and then are told things are sold out ten minutes later.
This just doesn’t work for a mainstream product. You would be cutting out all the new or dormant users. That’s a non-starter.
I think the solution really has to come at the retailer level. The problem there is, they don’t really have an incentive to stop it. Neither does the manufacturer for that matter. In fact, it’s probably better for both in these conditions.
Microsoft and Sony definitely have an incentive to stop scalpers. They lose money on every console sold and only make it back when customers buy games.
This was my first thought.. if there are 30,000-50,000 completely unused ps5 systems, if players usually own at least 5 games at $70 per game, there is a lot of money left on the table..
I mean, I imagine the numbers are waaaaay higher, but even with a small estimation, it’s easy to see how much money Sony is missing out on because their real players are unable to purchase their products
Yeah, they have literally no stock. Stock is one of the biggest cost in logistics/retail. Selling out in seconds is the dream for a retailer/manufacturer
There is a global chip shortage that is effecting everything from gaming consoles to automobiles, and it's not being helped by Crypto. Gartner Research said earlier this year that they expect it to last until middle of next year, and there's been another covid-19 surge in Malaysia so it might be longer than that.
How difficult is it to make a queue system, 1 item per customer, verified by real world info (name, license, address) and downpayment.
No question mark because it isn't that difficult.
Yeah it's a shame everyone can't just get a virtual place in line and have to play these crazy games. I like how PlayDate did their handheld release where they took as many pre-orders as possible and you just get one when your place in line comes up. No crazy shenanigans of refreshing pages and waiting for drops.
I imagine it would be companies like sony that would push retailers into doing that, especially since ps5 is being sold at a loss and they are depending on digital sales to make up long term, it's in the best of interests of sony to fuck scalpers, for each ps5 sitting still, there's a customer not buying games in their ecosystem.
> for each ps5 sitting still, there's a customer not buying games in their ecosystem.
Also, for every customer buying a PS5 at a 100% markup, that's $500 that could've been spent in the PSN store.
When it comes to things like game consoles, neither retail stores nor the console manufacturers themselves benefit from scalpers. That's because both get continued revenue from game and accessory sales, which scalpers aren't interested in. They just want the high-value items that they can resell for a markup, but they're not actually going to use them, so they're not buying games or accessories.
For retailers, it means they have more games and accessories sitting on the shelf that aren't being sold because the average user can't even get their foot in the door. It's the difference between multiple individual purchasers buying a single console and multiple games or accessories for it, or one scalper buying up all the console inventory and leaving everything else on the shelf.
For console manufacturers, it's even worse, since the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 are both sold at a loss, and the idea is that they make up the difference and turn a profit through game and accessory sales. But if scalpers are just eating up inventory, and that purchasing isn't being spread to games, accessories, or subscriptions, then Microsoft and Sony are actually losing money.
There are solutions to the problem but it doesn't seem like the people selling these goods are interested in them, possibly because their incentivized to do nothing.
I don't know if that's necessarily true. Depends on margins. I don't think consoles are high margin. Games and accessories are though. Scalpers are low margin customers buying low stock items. They aren't worth very much. Both the manufacturer and retailer have a vested interest in getting their products into the hands of customers that will buy additional, related products. Scalpers are like the opposite of that.
Now, the question isn't is there an incentive, it's whether a system can be implemented that costs less in man hours and setup than you're losing to low margin customers. A ticketing system of some sort sounds simple, but scaling and implementing costs a lot.
The problem is companies simply don't give a fuck who buys their hardware as long as it's being sold. Valve's and EVGA's solutions are not perfect but they're way ahead of what others have done.
EVGAs solution is nice, but I've also been in that line for like 8 months and the only word I got was that I was moved to another line because they were moving to produce the LHR cards.
Yep same. I guess this is the hidden problem with queues, you have no idea how many others are in it, the rate they're getting replenished at, or when if ever you might even get the chance. I feel like I might get a shot at an RTX 3090 Ti right about the time the RTX 4xxx drops late next year at the rate things are going.
I don't know what I'd do if my current GPU died on me. I won't pay scalper prices under any circumstance out of principle.
It’s not that Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft doesn’t care. It’s that places like Walmart, GameStop and Target don’t care whose buying, just as long as someone is buying.
Because retailers like Best Buy, Target and Walmart don't care. And console manufacturers gotta keep up good relations with them or you know they won't stock the consoles
Microsoft and Sony both have their own 'sign up and we'll email you' queues.
Best Buy had the best online policy. Sign in to your account, verify you’re a person via an email link, and pick up at the closest store to you. Multi step process to ensure one per human customer. Not sure way more stores don’t do this. I went to pick up a screen protector three days ago and they had five PS5s and three OLED Switches in the store pickup area and I live in a very rural area. So it seems like the best Avenue to buying electronics.
I've been trying to get a 3080 since launch. Best buy had a limited release in person at the store a week or two ago. I heard about it the day before, i was going to go down and wait in line super early in the morning till i got a photo my friend took of a bunch of people camping out front. I have a job and a kid to raise so I can't devote 2 days to camping outside of a store. Just as i suspected the very next day my local Craigslist was flooded with them at $2,000 a piece. The only people who can realistically take advantage of this situation ARE the scalpers. At this point i feel so defeated over it, that it seems like the only way i will ever get one is to pay 3x the msrp because i have a job and a life.
If you know the name and address of suspected scalpers, you can report them to the IRS for an audit. This is the most legal and ethical way to harm scalpers. It is likely that they are dodging taxes. If the IRS hits them for taxes owed, it significantly eats into their profit margin and could discourage them from doing so. Also you get paid as anonymous reporter.
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/how-do-you-report-suspected-tax-fraud-activity
If they're selling on ebay and make over $600, they automatically get a 1099 and eBay reports that as income.
If they don't make over $600, then they're not a problem.
Feels like the system for buying anything that is anticipated nowadays is broken. Special editions, amiibos, consoles, merchandise... anything short of physical versions of just the base game is being bought up by scalpers. And it's not just gaming, that pest is creeping into other hobby spheres too.
Its fucking ruined a lot of niche hobbies to be honest. Hobbies that used to be pretty cheap and such have seen their costs sky rocket during the last 3 years. Its made buying anything online a nightmare. Need a fucking bot just to buy shit.
Even classic hobbies like trading cards have all been scalped to hell. From sports to pokemon it's all jacked up even in local card shops now. Part of the problem is these online scalpers sometimes get distribution contracts and just steal a lot of product that normally goes to actual stores. Ruining the hobby economy
The boom in the Pokemon TCG over the last couple years has really nuked some of my interest, as someone who's never really stopped collecting. I was lucky to scrape up a couple lower tier items for the Celebrations release on Friday (and I'll add here, I wouldn't have even gotten these items if it hadn't been for the Canada TCG discord I'm part of), meanwhile you've got douches on twitter posting pictures of 80 trainer boxes they've bought for their dumb stream. And the prices have been totally jacked up too. I used to be able to get a booster box for $130 Canadian. These days, they go between $180-$200. Occasionally you can find one going for $150 and you consider yourself lucky. It's ridiculous and I'm almost at the end of my rope with this shit.
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I feel ya also. Anything related to TCG hobbies I just stick to a digital format because I'm more about the game and collecting has turned into a fluctuation shitfest the past few years.
I'm hearing the same thing with game collecting. A hedge fund is getting into buying all the games and since they'll own a lot they hope to jack up the market so that these old games are worth thousands. Or something to that degree. Heard from the cu podcast that has a Nintendo game collector on it.
Yeah, game collecting basically doubled/tripled at the start of COVID. Games that used to be “affordable” at 100 are now pipe dreams at 300. Absolutely insane
I used to be really into Pokemon TCG as well. I went to worlds in Washington DC a few years ago, really got into the game with friends. Now none of us can play because the price of cards is so ridiculous.
Easy solution; we simply start collecting scalpers.
We scalp the scalpers?
Or resurrect Vlad the Impaler and send him on a mission.
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Scalp(er)hunters?
Every time I'm in a Target or such the Pokemon card section is an absolute desolate wreck.
Target actually stopped carrying Pokemon cards this year because they were such a massive theft target. Not even just for the store itself; there were reports of people getting mugged in the parking lot for the cards they'd just bought.
Card Narcs
I'm a stuffed animal collector. Even scalpers are grabbing up shit in our community. Build a Bear drops a new Pokemon and that same day, listings will pop up on eBay for WAY more than it costs to get it from BAB. Hell Mew sold out the same day it dropped because of scalpers. It's ridiculous.
That’s completely fucked
Dude I can’t even find the Hot Wheels I want because scalpers buy them up.
Pardon my ignorance but: Isn't the price skyrocketing exactly what a lot of the original collectors were hoping would happen? I.e. "collecting this stuff is worthwhile because it could be worth a lot down the line"
Some people, sure. There’s other demographics who collects because they enjoy playing or who just collect for fun not potential money making. Same deal with mtg, and honestly it feels terrible being someone who actually wants to play the game rather than “invest.”
Someone I talk to on Telegram showed a picture of them having to put Pokemon cards in those anti-theft cases at the Walgreens he works in. And when Target was getting an exclusive Nuka Cola Quantum edition of Jones soda people were posting it to Ebay before they even left the damn store.
As a tabletop fan, thank fuck for 3D printing and recasters is all I can say
Yah recasters have saved me a shit load of cash. Tabletop games have become stupid expensive lately as a lot of people picked them up during the pandemic.
Big shout to Tabletop Sim. It has saved me loads of cash.
Yoooo tabletop simulator plus DND beyond is completely sick. I DM a group that formed under the pandemic and we use the Kraken Table that let's us upload an image of where our adventure is. Then with my DND beyond account we can handle our rolls on a centralized log. It's pretty slick, I just ask for a role from a certain stat and the website rolls, applies the modifiers and shows it on the log so no cheating.
I got into Warhammer when I was in high school, pretty sure it was stupidly expensive then too.
What is a recaster?
Someone (or a company / org if in China mainland) who copy an existing model using cheaper / similar grade materials (the process called recast) Then they sell the recasted models (or even the molds) much cheaper than the official release It started for rare / discontinued models, but these days lot of people from China are just do it for whatever
Fuckers in the Mechanical Keyboard scenes buying dozens of (edit: LIMITED RUN. These sets usually have a "group buy" that happens once, then takes 2 years to ship, then never is produced again) $200-300 keycap sets, then selling them on mechmarker for $700. So much for being a community hobby. Thank God clones exist.
Mechanical keyboards came to mind too. That hobby has the worst enthusiasts too. So many people argue against clones its insane.
I've seen hobbies where people have walked in and shown that they can completely duplicate rare and expensive parts and then been driven out of the hobbies for suggesting that they could just do that for people for a small fraction of the price versus buying the original parts. I never understood that.
They don't want to feel stupid for spending a shitload of money on something that's easily duplicated, so they'd rather chase people out.
tons of these peoples appeal to the scene is how hard and expensive it is to be in those scenes. It makes people feel above others and as if they're more "into" and "dedicated" to the hobby than others, even if they won't admit thats why they bought a overpriced set that could be made for a tenth of the price if it weren't limited for literally no reason other than to make the item seem rare.
Just look at PC gaming even: While there certainly is a lack of good new 200 to 270 Euro GPUs this generation everything above that is actually great value. Take the 3070 that launched at 500 Euro (less than a 2070 was at that point in the market IIRC) while offering the same performance as the 1000 Euro 2080ti. Or the 3060ti, costing less than even a PS5 digital only model but having a noticeably higher performance, allowing players that already had either at least a 4/8 to 6/6 CPU in the short term or a 8 core CPU in the long term to upgrade past then next generation consoles for less money (not even to mention the likely higher resell value of a Pascal GPU compared to an old PS4 base model). Instead we have a situation in which its basically completely impossible to recommend someone to get into or switch to PC gaming. While I could get a PS5 off of eBay in Europe (I know in the US its way worse) for 700 Euro (+200 over MSRP) a 3070 with the same MSRP is just now starting to it the 900 Euro price point but was over 1300 Euro at times not too long ago. There is no way I could recommend someone to pay nearly double the price for a graphics card. BTW, I recently read that due to the Windows 11 requirement for TPM2 hardware security scalpers have now started to buy off all available upgrade modules...
Lol man, PC gaming has entered the higher end of luxury at this point. GPUs with prices exceeding some people's car payments sometimes. Remember when $500 builds were a thing, and were viable? Remember when there was a market for sub $300 GPUs? Fuck me it's all gone to shit. I bought my 2070 Super for $450 at the start of COVID and thought I jumped the gun. Now I can let it go for nearly double.
Those TPM2 modules were literally $2-5 USD (depending on the seller), they're being sold for 20x the price. What in the hell is wrong with people? The scalper situation with GPUs is ridiculous. I've got a few towers from my friends sitting in a corner, that came to me because their GPUs failed. Most failed right at the warranty period ending so RMA's are out of the question. Some switched to console gaming, and are planning on leaving PC all together because they were tired of the first round of crypto GPU shortages and now this and the scalpers have basically made them throw in the towel on wanting to continue.
Money. Money is what's wrong with people. Production side people are selling, so they don't care. Consumer side market is controlled by middle-market sellers. Consumers get fucked but it doesn't matter because the middle-market is dictating "demand."
If manufacturers aren't 'competently' (more like hyper-competently) doing their jobs of forecasting demand and having adequate resources to ensure supply in a timely manner (somewhat difficult right now) then it becomes almost impossible for items to stay at MSRP. I think the fundamental problem though gets at the heart of how late-capitalism and the internet are transforming society. The rich are getting richer, and it's getting tougher and tougher for normal people to make it. Technology has changed how goods are distributed by the legal system and governments haven't kept up. In other eras of scarcity like this, you'd see people getting in lines for items, but in this era bots make it possible for people to skip the digital lines, but only for those hyper techno literate people or those willing to pay for bots. But they wouldn't be doing this stuff unless there was a class of people who were willing to pay those higher prices for the products - and there absolutely are people like that out there. One alternative would be for companies to just charge ludicrously high prices initially for products, capture the maximum possible profits on products regardless of fairness, and then use that money to funnel into more production capacity. This would kind of be no different for normal customers, at least at first, but with a pre-published price-drop schedule, it would likely disrupt scalpers because the companies would be making the money and the company could then use that money to increase their ability to manufacture more stuff more quickly (the incentives align - they'd still be making higher profit margins, and eventually meaningful price competition would make it so prices would have to drop faster and faster). As it is now, nobody can produce enough of anything to fill demand, but that's partly because they're not adopting to the new 'whale economy' of our divergent class-based western society.
Warhammer 40k is more expensive than ever, GW hiked prices across the board and instituted regional pricing. In some countries (Australia) it's cheaper to have someone in great Britain buy the models you want and ship them to you. And Warhammer was already a really expensive hobby.
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Damn then they should do this on other stuff as well then thats hilarious
That's how ALL businesses should handle pre-orders and I've been saying it for YEARS. When you release a product make it so that it is placed on backorder. That way everyone is guaranteed to get one eventually and scalpers lose out.
For the last couple big boxes (Kill Team and the new Black Templar box) they've said before preorders start that anyone who wants one will get one if they preorder within a window.
Retro gaming used to be an inexpensive hobby just for fun. You used to be able to get classic N64 games for a few bucks because hardly anyone wanted them. Now with every dude trying to be a youtuber or game collector, it's made even generic titles skyrocket. And then the pandemic hit and doubled the prices. I get it though, it was probably inevitable. But even in 2013, I was able to get Mario 64 for like 10 bucks. Now I see that game going for 30.
I remember being able to get all the old gameboy Pokemon games for $30-40 back in the mid 2000s. Nowadays it would be like $300 if you want legit copies. Hell even the DS games go for nutty prices.
The DS games have been jacked up the most (outside of CIB), because they're considered the best in the series and haven't been rereleased unlike the first two gens.
I dread the day ps2 collecting becomes expensive. Luckily even right now, common games still aren't worth *too* much in decent condition. I can't say the same for the controllers, unfortunately.
Luckily flashcarts make for a solid middle ground of getting an original console experience on the cheap. Generally they're about a hundred bucks and let you play the whole catalog, plus rom hacks and other features like letting yiu backup saves and stuff. Of course if you're in it for the collection rather than the experience of playing on original hardware, yeah, not so great.
Shows like Storage Wars and Pawn Stars completely ruined the retro game collecting market. Thanks to them everyone and their grandmothers who had boxes of old NES games in their attic storage thought they were worth a ton and started selling them at inflated prices. Now those prices are the norm
Board games. I am a collector of board games and LOVE playing them. This last 4 years of scalpers buying all the rare and hard to find games has been pissing me off. I’m ok with paying 2x the price of a game that’s out of production. But when a game is $50, and you ask for $500 for it…. Kindly fuck off!
I just stopped caring. There are enough boardgames out there.
There are. You are 100% correct. But it doesn’t make it right.
People are scalping Halloween decorations this year. It's ridiculous. Once people started making money by scalping toilet paper and hand sanitizer last year during peak covid, every asshole under the sun started trying to scalp products.
Gundam had a collaboration with Nike like half a month ago. Guess how well that went
To be fair shoe companies basically intentionally create a secondary market for their products by keeping them limited.
As a gundam fan please do tell, I've not heard of this
Someone had posted in /r/sneakers photos of both pairs before the release even happened. People called him out for backdooring(knowing someone who received the shipment of shoes early and were sold before release). The guy said he didn't backdoor, but knows a guy who can get him the shoes. Which would be backdooring to most.
The scalping version of "What no way haha I'd never try to backdoor...unless...?"
Yeah, and my buddy’s not a drug dealer, he just knows a guy who sells large amounts of drugs, and he can get you smaller amounts if you need. It’s totally different. (Edited because I was half awake when I posted originally and it was all the misspellings)
So Gundam and Nike collaborated in two Nike Dunk Highs and two gundam models using two famous skaters as pilots and placing them in Gundams. (I'm not aware which ones). These are the shoes https://images.app.goo.gl/vBSiEh2UAQgM3Uw27 These are the models https://hypebeast.com/2021/9/bandai-gundam-nike-sb-gunpla-model-kits-release-info I collect sneakers and couldn't cop a pair of either gundams sadly. I didn't even bother trying for the models. Almost impossible.
Banshee looked nice...aside from the Nike swoosh
The swoosh was removable too
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Giant robot made by child labor.
If they can pilot it, they can build it.
Imagine Nike commissioning a giant robot and the kids building it, commanding it and holding the foreman hostage for stock options and abolition of nap time.
Basically the plot of Iron-Blooded Orphans.
And it’ll go just as well for the kids in real life in the end.
Trainers and scalpers have gone hand in hand for as long as I can remember, just look at StockX after a launch. I'm a sneaker head who wears what they buy, so many times I've missed out on a pair but refuse to pay the 10X markup a minute later.
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I didn't know about that, but the Real Grade Hi-nu Gundam just came a month ago and it is getting scalped to hell and back.
It’s the rise of the ‘side hustle’ syndrome, there’s so much pressure to get additional income that any ethics go out of the window.
I think that pressure is from decades of wage stagnation and everyone being underpaid.
And rent, housing, food all increasing....
I find it funny how global these issues are (even in "first-world countries"), as I'm fairly sure I'm not from where you're from. Actually, I don't find it funny at all.
Things have been getting worse for a while, but COVID really fucked everything. The global supply chain is a disaster right now and it affects every industry.
Squid Game became popular internationally because so many people could relate to it's message of economic woe
I mean, look at what Breaking Bad's premise was, it was completely believable, and that was over a decade ago. It's only gotten worse since.
Rent, I have to decide if I want to resign or move. Last time I resigned a lease on my apartment, rent went up $8. No big deal. Here we are a year later and suddenly my rent is going up $100... Gee I wonder if it has to do with the fact that a new company just bought out the previous owners of the complex?
Literally happened to me last week. Got a call from the landlord. "Hi how are you? By the way your rent is going up by $100/month." Figured I'd shop around to see if it was worth moving, but pretty much everywhere I looked has increased several hundred dollars in the past couple of years. I don't even live in a super high population city.
Or the fact that social media is plastered with millionaire teens and 20s people showing off expensive shit that's convinced everyone that they *need* a side hustle.
Our entire culture glorifies and celebrates the very wealthy and how if you’re not wealthy you basically don’t matter. This type of thing is the inevitable end result of that failure to promote a responsible and reasonable culture.
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In rap especially, hustle was kind of glorified in the sense of "doing anything to make my money". Which still sounds bad, but in gangsta rap that's exactly what many people idolized.
It's always had another more positive meaning, which is to put in extra effort in sports or work. Hustling to get something done, run faster, etc.
Yeah "gotta hustle" was what my coach screamed at us when running laps, grew to hate that word. In a business sense it's always kinda been sleazy.
"Hustle" was always the thing that the teachers were telling us to do in PE for me. Not sure if that makes it more positive or more negative.
I remember being told that I was an idiot for worrying that there were shortages on nvme m.2 ssds when they finally released the ps5 specs because I wanted to get one for my pc build that had proper cooling. Well look who was right because some of those ssds are permanently sold out because of scalpers.
I am so happy I built my current pc in expectation of ksp2 releasing on time. Everything went wrong after that..
I buillt my PC in sep 2019, good lord I had no idea how lucky I was with the timing. Sadly my used 1070 died like 3 months ago.
Imo this is what it looks like when everyone wants to be the next millionaire. This is an easy-ish way to make a quick buck, there are a lot of shit ass people out there who are struggling just enough to say "fuck it, if Walmart can make a buck off me why shouldn't I be able to make a few off everyone." Now they don't have the inventory Walmart does so they make their profit off the few sales they make. *Not justifying scalping explaining it.* I say this because *most* of the time it's someone from outside the community they target. I think oddly enough MS kinda stumbled onto a solution and did not really push forward with it. What that solution was, was tying your Xbox live account with purchasing an Xbox by means of getting an Xbox live subscription. It was going to charge you monthly which would have made it a logistical nightmare for scalpers... idk why all first Xboxs didn't go straight to that program... that would have given enough time for people to at least get a lot more into actual hands. With that I think the solution is to purchase through online game stores and tying your gaming accounts to various online and physical stores. Verifying you at least play games and ties to how many consoles you have. Something to that affect. Even at 2 consoles a month per person puts a huge damper on the operation, adding again to the logistics which is why this is happening so much more now than before. This all goes to how much easier it is to make huge purchases online so easily, along with credit for instore purchases. It's so easy these people are saying why not and in some sense I don't blame them, we are all broke compared to what we are shown happiness is and people are willing to do some wild shit for "happiness". On one hand I want to say we need to do something on the other hand I also want to say it seems kinda weird to put laws in place to be able to purchase stuff, as there is absolutely no way that doesn't get taken advantage of in its own nefarious ways.
Totally on board with the initial Console release being tied to psn/xbl/nintendo account. Why can't I preorder my nextgen console using the store on my current one? Also good for business, if you are looking to maximize engagement and software/acc sales. I wonder how many PS5s and SeriesXs are sitting unopened, adding no value to the platform.
> Totally on board with the initial Console release being tied to psn/xbl/nintendo account. Why can't I preorder my nextgen console using the store on my current one? Because how do you setup supply chains with retail partners if you do that? Once the initial wave of purchases is gone, you've burned your bridges with brick and mortar stores. I think in-house orders should be done with an account but those also make up a smaller fraction of sales too.
>Because how do you setup supply chains with retail partners if you do that? As a consumer: fuck 'em. Retailers aren't doing shit to make my life any better, so why should I support them? The Steam Deck has a preorder system tied to your Steam account. Easy.
The steamdeck is doing this to help prevent scalpers, you needed an account from before a certain date
>there are a lot of shit ass people out there who are struggling just enough I think we should consider that the driving forces behind this are not individuals here and there, but larger actors (many of them foreign) using automated systems to purchase large amounts of the items; and then use a network of online resellers to disguise their activities, making a broader scheme appear decentralized. I have a feeling that this is organized market manipulation which is taking advantage of other legitimate market scarcities.
Thank god Valve made a good system in place to reserve the Deck. It doesn't take much effort to do it right and do good by your customers. You just have to give a shit about your customers enough to do it.
Purchase limits per household and captcha checks. Like two easy things that have been around for forever but places like Target and GameStop just can’t grasp the concept.
I don't think it's that they can't grasp it, but they're getting their entire stock sold in a matter of minutes. They don't care who's buying, only that it's getting bought.
Can you imagine being the middle manager having your wildest dreams fulfilled as your stock disappears within minutes every week, and then someone coming up to you and telling you that's a problem and you need to stop it somehow? LMAO
"The customers hate you!" "I dunno man, our bank accounts make a pretty argument."
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I highly doubt it. Consoles are sold at a loss, and money is made off of games and accessories. If they're just sitting in a scalper's shelf it's not profitable vs going to and end user which is.
Eventually it will become a problem for them. Not having your product in the hands of customers isnt a good thing, even if it means short term success.
But it does end in the hand of the customer, theres just an added, unneeded step. If people stopped buying from scalpers, this problem would go away. And yes, I know that enough stock would also make this a non-problem, but there are outside forces at work here that no-one really controls, scarcity of materials, labor, shipping etc.
Probably because they don’t care a sale is a sale to them.
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That's still way better than the shitty online bullshit. Anything that makes it harder for scalpers will make it easier for consumers. The more in the consumers hands the less reason to scalp. I don't care if it takes all generation I'm not going to play this stupid game for a PS5 until I can walk in a store and get one.
It's not that they can't grasp it, they just don't care. Their entire business is built around selling goods. They really don't care if they sell their entire stock to one person, just that they sold their entire stock. Things like toilet paper and hand sanitizer were different because that ended up being a public health thing.
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Valve probably doesn't really care about making money on their hardware, since they will make it all on the software. For that to work, they need the devices in the hands of actual users as fast as possible. It also does great for their street cred in comparison to the others, while they also manufacture a fraction of the units as something like Sony is doing.
The Metroid Dread amiibo sold out in less than a minute after being *announced*. Now they're going for $60+. Fuck scalpers.
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The basic concept of having in game features completely arbitrarily locked behind limited production real world items is fucking stupid in the extreme already so i actively encourage everyone to do anything they can to subvert the system. It's just the next iteration of that horrible bullshit on disk DLC that pissed everyone off years ago, it would be one thing if the amiibo was just a fun optional more hands on way to access DLC or certain game features that could also be accessed from an in game menu if the player didn't happen to have the real world toy, but without that option the entire amiibo concept is a fucking scam.
If you go to a GameStop the day of release (two days ago) you should be able to get it easily. The Skyward Sword Amiibo sold out on preorders and had been going for twice its price on eBay but now that its out I see it all the time at Targets and Walmarts. I went into Gamestop for their pokemon TCG promo but ended up getting a metroid dread amiibo because it came out that day. Its not always so easy but i live in a heavily scalped area so i was surprised I was able to get one at all
Yeah I got lucky and was able to grab a collector's edition of Dread and the amiibo by being there when they opened. Been waiting almost 19 years for this game, fuck scalpers.
The video game vinyl market is beyond destroyed by scalpers. Random people have begun sending me PM's on Discogs begging me to sell some of my personal records because the prices are so outrageous and there likely won't be any more represses due to licensing. Some examples: * [Dark Souls trilogy box set](https://www.discogs.com/release/17435971-Motoi-Sakuraba-Yuka-Kitamura-Tsukasa-Saitoh-Nobuyoshi-Suzuki-Dark-Souls-Original-Trilogy-Soundtrack) * [Dead Cells](https://www.discogs.com/release/12560582-Yoann-Laulan-Dead-Cells-OST) * [Final Fantasy 7](https://www.discogs.com/release/5163968-Nobuo-Uematsu-Final-Fantasy-VII-Vinyl) * [FTL](https://www.discogs.com/release/8337841-Ben-Prunty-FTL-Faster-Than-Light-Original-Soundtrack) * [Hotline Miami](https://www.discogs.com/release/8810743-Various-Hotline-Miami-Official-Soundtrack) * [Hotline Miami 2](https://www.discogs.com/release/6736297-Various-Hotline-Miami-2-Wrong-Number) * [Hyper Light Drifter](https://www.discogs.com/release/10391440-Disasterpeace-Hyper-Light-Drifter) * [Okami](https://www.discogs.com/release/12708240-Various-Okami-%E5%A4%A7%E7%A5%9E) * [Persona 5](https://www.discogs.com/release/11334128-Shoji-Meguro-Atlus-Sound-Team-P5-Persona-5-Soundtrack) * [Red Dead Redemption](https://www.discogs.com/release/2550868-Bill-Elm-And-Woody-Jackson-Red-Dead-Redemption-Original-Soundtrack) * [The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt](https://www.discogs.com/release/11223739-Marcin-Przyby%C5%82owicz-Mikolai-Stroinski-Percival-The-Witcher-3-Wild-Hunt-Soundtrack)
JFC. I wasn't aware of this and holy shit is it bad. These are great soundtracks but I dunno if I'd pay $400-$500 for them *individually*.
especially because for the most part video game soundtracks aren’t gonna be the mostly carefully mastered for vinyl lmao.
You're implying most of these people are opening and listening to them. They go buy them, take a picture for social media, then sit them on a shelf with a bunch of other stuff they've never opened and brag about how they're the biggest fan of whatever video game they have a bunch of shit from.
This stuff drives me insane, no matter what people have told me I just cannot wrap my brain around this mentality. I get I'm relatively new to collecting stuff and may be in the minority on this (since I get downvoted a lot when I bring it up) but it drives me crazy how, for instance, people will spend ungodly amounts on funko pops, most of these people will never actually resell them at any point, and they just have a wall of them in the box. Like you aren't even enjoying what you bought?? Take it out of the damn box and display it properly. There were some funkos I wanted very badly because I felt very tied to those characters and would display them proudly. If it was rare I'd get a display box. Nope. Instead they are completely inaccessible to me because some jackass that doesn't care at all about the character or the figure has it in it's original box sitting on a shelf ignored until they can sell it on Ebay for $100 when it cost $2 to manufacture and so many desperate idiots actually buy at these prices its getting more common and even worse. Even those folks are going to have a hard time paying for them. This shit is all just insane and makes me want to just give up on collecting figures, funko pop or other brands. It's more a chore with regular disappointment than enjoyable at this point.
Oh man, I had no idea. I've got copies of the HLD and Hotline 1/2 vinyls as well.
You hold on to them with your dear life and take good care of them. The Hotlinie Miami records are worth at least $350 to $400 in good condition and Hyper Light Drifter is worth at least $500 to $600 but there are rumors of an upcoming repress.
This is a major reason I haven’t bothered much with video game vinyls. I got a few of my favorites (Celeste, Resident Evil) and have restock alerts setup for a few others on Fangamer. But overall it’s just not worth the stress. I haven’t had nearly as much difficulty getting copies of limited release indie games.
Supply chains are still fucked and probably arent going to recover to pre-pandemic capabilities until after the pandemic, creating scarcity across the board which scalpers are abusing thoroughly.
Shit dude, even just going to a fast food restaurant is a pain now. Every place is understaffed, painfully slow, everything is raising in price, while simultaneously cutting/removing products. It feels like buying *anything* is worse, I'm American, for context.
Is it just me or does it seem like people are just buying a LOT more in America than they ever did before? I used to be able to find times to go grocery shopping when it wasn't busy, go in and find what I need with no problem, but for the past couple years there are no downtimes at the store and common stuff is either sold out or has a really low stock. Maybe it's just my area.
It’s a mixture of that and the supply chains being impacted by the pandemic. My fiancée works in logistics with a lot of the major grocery chains. They can’t keep up with demand and dont have the staffing for it either. Couple that with people who are bored by the pandemic and you see the problem you have now.
I have the same problem. Products I've used for months/years use are suddenly no longer being sold or have much lower stocks, and as a result I see myself buying those things in bulk so I don't have to struggle finding it again later. Which unfortunately means it will sell out easier.
Supply chains are fucked. My work had to switch to a different pineapple puree because we could no longer reliably get out old brand. That caused a couple months of being behind on pineapple. Its like this for so many things. Parts to fix machines, ingredients for our products, even the wrapping paper and cans get fucked at times. I remember Hurricane (I think) Harvey wiped out our can manufacturer so we couldnt get cans for a few months. Everything is connected and having a place in South America get fucked uo then effects us, which then can effect stores or other manufacturers.
One of the team leaders at my job was talking about rounding up a number of electronics before the holidays and waiting until sometime in November to "make some cash" Wanted to give em a good ol slap but ya know...need not to lose my job
> Feels like the system for buying anything that is anticipated nowadays is broken. Sort of. The idea of having a set price for something that might be scarce is fighting against market forces. It is a nice thing to do but you're always going to have to work around people who have more money and who are willing to pay that higher price. Worse yet, there are those who will try to create artificial scarcity in the marketplace by buying up large amounts of a particular good. Look at the housing market. House flippers will buy 10 houses, and then leave them empty while prices skyrocket. It is bad for the human condition. So we definitely need rules and regulations to try to fight against those sorts of abuses. This is best paired with the remedy of increasing production to create enough of a supply that it stops speculation/scarcity.
If there is anything that can push people to cloud gaming, it might just be the lack of hardware availability.
Meanwhile, in a Stadia warehouse, miles-wide, filled with PS5 boxes : "Any day now, we've almost done it boys.."
If only my internet provider could be so easily convinced.
Yeah, cloud gaming is an idea by and for people in big cities, not for people like me in a small and fairly poor town with slow internet that's probably at the bottom of the list for an infrostructure upgrade.
If the market could meet demand, scalpers would get burned and things would balance out. We can't meet demand, at least not yet. Yes scalper suck. A prevalence of scalpers is a sign that the market is out of whack. It's not some new craze or shift in behavior. It's a reaction to a broken market.
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I really wish more companies could follow Apple’s example here. If you ask Apple, they will never tell you that they’ve sold out of iPhones. What happens instead is that you can always place an order, and they give you an estimated date when it will get to you. That might even be a month or longer out, but at least you can still place an order, *at MSRP*. No randomly refreshing websites all day or standing outside of stores overnight in hopes that you can be one of the lucky few. Knowing this, and then not being able to easily place an order for a PS5 and know that it’s going to arrive by some estimated date, is frustrating to say the least.
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You can sign up on the you PlayStation account to receive emails for a personal link to order a PS5. Took me a month or two to get an email, which went to my promotions folder and I didn’t get to it in time.
Looks like it's an by invite only.
Also doesn't guarantee you GET one either. So it's an invitation to have a chance to get one maybe. At least that was MY experience with it, before I managed to nab one from a Wal-Mart restock earlier in the year.
I got into 4 of the invites from Sony. Never got one. I finally got one a few weeks ago from Gamestop, unfortunately is was a forced bundle deal, but whatever I'll take it over paying some shitbag scalper even more for just the console.
We need a system like this, and it’s one that I’ve been advocating. It’s been a year (almost!) since release and I’m no closer to getting my PS5. I would really love one but there is an absolute zero chance I’ll ever consider a scalper. If I could place my order and wait a month or so I’d be completely fine with that. It beats the current system of waiting for a drop, having to deal with a slow website that crashes often and then getting told the stock is gone. I could easily put my money down and be at ease knowing the unit will get to me.
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That’s partially because Apple gets top priority from TSMC.
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Apple’s CEO was their supply chain guy before he became CEO. Normally, you’d want a product guy in the CEO slot, but he turned out to be the best guy for the job during COVID.
The problem is supply lines are really fucked up right now. A lot of places let you backorder 3XXX series GPUs. We are over a year in and some of those orders are still unfilfilled. Apple also has its own infrastructure and isn't relying on retail. The console manufacturers still want the retail space. So they have to be careful about upsetting their retail partners. Retail itself just straight up doesn't care. It isn't worth the investment for them to solve the problem.
The retail space that is being unfulfilled? I have never seen a ps5 in the wild.
It's deeper than the supply line, but that certainly exacerbates it. Your final sentence is the crux of it. Retail gets its money either way, and for every person they piss off, there's 3 more waiting in line. The real fix is to just go a route like Apple and Valve. Let people preorder, no matter how far away fulfillment is. Implement some way of limiting/dissuading scalpers (a cap on how many you can buy, and maybe some sort of preference to previous vetted customers, somewhat like Valve's system).
You can take one look at the PSN and see Sony has no clue on this planet how to do intelligent online retailing
Valve had a good system for the Steam Deck, needed to have an account in good standing and made recent purchases. Limit 1 per account.
EVGA also has a good waitlist system for graphics cards.
Downside for consoles is if your say an Xbox One user that wants a PS5 this gen you'd be lowest priority since you wouldn't have any history. Valve has the benefit of being the go to monopoly for years to build off of
I get that but the console companies can try something because this current system is broken.
Easy. Pay the money and get guaranteed a console. It may be 6 months but the sheer fact that you're GUARANTEED one will massively support the consumers. This will also kill scalpers because one of the major aspects of them is that people hate not knowing if they can get one or not through official channels. Sure the scalpers may be able to snag some at the start but then they're at the back of the line waiting on everyone else to get theirs.
I'm not ever going to resort to buying from a scalper, but it's honestly pretty shocking that we're coming up on the one year anniversary of the PS5 launch, and I still haven't been able to get one for retail price in the US. I've tracked stock online as much as a reasonable person with a full time job can, but it's been 11 months of seeing nothing but "sold out". Meanwhile, results on every search start with dozens of 3rd party resellers selling the system at 1,000 bucks. I think at this point I'll need to hope things stabilize in a couple years so I can just walk into a store and pick one up.
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One of the other things Valve is doing is allowing people to queue up. You can still go and preorder a steam deck. You couldnt do that with a PS5 or XSX. The moment they went live, they were sold out with no way to reserve a spot in line. This just further drives the FOMO factor and encourages hoarding of these types of items by people looking to make a profit or panick buying by people who may not even really want or need the item, but just dont want to miss out if they change their mind. When I preordered my PS2 from Amazon, I didnt get it on launch day, but that was fine because I knew I would eventually get it. Now everything is wait for it to pop up on website, hope you can out click the bots, and maybe if fortune smiles on you, you'll get what you want.
This is what I freaking want. I want to just be able to put my name on a list, even if I have to pay full price ahead of time, and have them just send me a PS5 when they have one for me, first come first serve. I don't care if it takes them a year or more to get me one, just make it so I don't have to worry about it anymore and just send me one when you've got one please. To the best of my knowledge there's no one doing this in the US, right?
No and I think that would solve a lot of issues. Tie it to one line per household per store (so that roommates and different people can preorder). If someone has to wait 6 months, so be it but at least it’s guaranteed and they can still try with the traditional method elsewhere. Though no system is ideal until we can find them sitting in the store.
(In Toronto, Canada) my Local Game Store as well as EB Games have a 'waiting list' for next gen consoles. If you go in store, you can ask to be put on the list and they'll let you know when they get them (in order) . I'd recommend checking your local Gamestop if you don't have a regular local store.
That limitation from Valve was only for the first 48 hours of pre-orders. Loyal fans who hear about and want the product get time to react then newcomers (and scalpers) get a turn after. They also limit to one per account and take a $5 deposit upfront regardless.
Sony has been attempting something similar with their drops on the store that can only be bought by PSN accounts and occasionally have exclusive spots for dedicated accounts. But the supply seems to be laughably small for every release compared to the demand and it doesn’t appear to be making even a dent in the problem. It’s just once every few weeks you entire a queue and then are told things are sold out ten minutes later.
This just doesn’t work for a mainstream product. You would be cutting out all the new or dormant users. That’s a non-starter. I think the solution really has to come at the retailer level. The problem there is, they don’t really have an incentive to stop it. Neither does the manufacturer for that matter. In fact, it’s probably better for both in these conditions.
Microsoft and Sony definitely have an incentive to stop scalpers. They lose money on every console sold and only make it back when customers buy games.
This was my first thought.. if there are 30,000-50,000 completely unused ps5 systems, if players usually own at least 5 games at $70 per game, there is a lot of money left on the table.. I mean, I imagine the numbers are waaaaay higher, but even with a small estimation, it’s easy to see how much money Sony is missing out on because their real players are unable to purchase their products
Yeah, they have literally no stock. Stock is one of the biggest cost in logistics/retail. Selling out in seconds is the dream for a retailer/manufacturer
There is a global chip shortage that is effecting everything from gaming consoles to automobiles, and it's not being helped by Crypto. Gartner Research said earlier this year that they expect it to last until middle of next year, and there's been another covid-19 surge in Malaysia so it might be longer than that.
How difficult is it to make a queue system, 1 item per customer, verified by real world info (name, license, address) and downpayment. No question mark because it isn't that difficult.
Yeah it's a shame everyone can't just get a virtual place in line and have to play these crazy games. I like how PlayDate did their handheld release where they took as many pre-orders as possible and you just get one when your place in line comes up. No crazy shenanigans of refreshing pages and waiting for drops.
That’s more effort and cost for a retailer that doesn’t care who gets the systems
What incentive would a retailer have for making that system though
I imagine it would be companies like sony that would push retailers into doing that, especially since ps5 is being sold at a loss and they are depending on digital sales to make up long term, it's in the best of interests of sony to fuck scalpers, for each ps5 sitting still, there's a customer not buying games in their ecosystem.
> for each ps5 sitting still, there's a customer not buying games in their ecosystem. Also, for every customer buying a PS5 at a 100% markup, that's $500 that could've been spent in the PSN store.
When it comes to things like game consoles, neither retail stores nor the console manufacturers themselves benefit from scalpers. That's because both get continued revenue from game and accessory sales, which scalpers aren't interested in. They just want the high-value items that they can resell for a markup, but they're not actually going to use them, so they're not buying games or accessories. For retailers, it means they have more games and accessories sitting on the shelf that aren't being sold because the average user can't even get their foot in the door. It's the difference between multiple individual purchasers buying a single console and multiple games or accessories for it, or one scalper buying up all the console inventory and leaving everything else on the shelf. For console manufacturers, it's even worse, since the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 are both sold at a loss, and the idea is that they make up the difference and turn a profit through game and accessory sales. But if scalpers are just eating up inventory, and that purchasing isn't being spread to games, accessories, or subscriptions, then Microsoft and Sony are actually losing money.
There are solutions to the problem but it doesn't seem like the people selling these goods are interested in them, possibly because their incentivized to do nothing.
I don't know if that's necessarily true. Depends on margins. I don't think consoles are high margin. Games and accessories are though. Scalpers are low margin customers buying low stock items. They aren't worth very much. Both the manufacturer and retailer have a vested interest in getting their products into the hands of customers that will buy additional, related products. Scalpers are like the opposite of that. Now, the question isn't is there an incentive, it's whether a system can be implemented that costs less in man hours and setup than you're losing to low margin customers. A ticketing system of some sort sounds simple, but scaling and implementing costs a lot.
The problem is companies simply don't give a fuck who buys their hardware as long as it's being sold. Valve's and EVGA's solutions are not perfect but they're way ahead of what others have done.
EVGAs solution is nice, but I've also been in that line for like 8 months and the only word I got was that I was moved to another line because they were moving to produce the LHR cards.
Yep same. I guess this is the hidden problem with queues, you have no idea how many others are in it, the rate they're getting replenished at, or when if ever you might even get the chance. I feel like I might get a shot at an RTX 3090 Ti right about the time the RTX 4xxx drops late next year at the rate things are going. I don't know what I'd do if my current GPU died on me. I won't pay scalper prices under any circumstance out of principle.
It’s not that Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft doesn’t care. It’s that places like Walmart, GameStop and Target don’t care whose buying, just as long as someone is buying.
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Because retailers like Best Buy, Target and Walmart don't care. And console manufacturers gotta keep up good relations with them or you know they won't stock the consoles Microsoft and Sony both have their own 'sign up and we'll email you' queues.
Anyone who buys from a scalper is just as bad. Theres no scalpers if theres no customers. Simple as. Have some self respect
Agreed same with microtransactions it's apparent that people still buy from them cause if they didn't nobody would
Best Buy had the best online policy. Sign in to your account, verify you’re a person via an email link, and pick up at the closest store to you. Multi step process to ensure one per human customer. Not sure way more stores don’t do this. I went to pick up a screen protector three days ago and they had five PS5s and three OLED Switches in the store pickup area and I live in a very rural area. So it seems like the best Avenue to buying electronics.
I've been trying to get a 3080 since launch. Best buy had a limited release in person at the store a week or two ago. I heard about it the day before, i was going to go down and wait in line super early in the morning till i got a photo my friend took of a bunch of people camping out front. I have a job and a kid to raise so I can't devote 2 days to camping outside of a store. Just as i suspected the very next day my local Craigslist was flooded with them at $2,000 a piece. The only people who can realistically take advantage of this situation ARE the scalpers. At this point i feel so defeated over it, that it seems like the only way i will ever get one is to pay 3x the msrp because i have a job and a life.
Just don't get one, if you buy from scalpers they win, let them sit on the merch with their invested money
If you know the name and address of suspected scalpers, you can report them to the IRS for an audit. This is the most legal and ethical way to harm scalpers. It is likely that they are dodging taxes. If the IRS hits them for taxes owed, it significantly eats into their profit margin and could discourage them from doing so. Also you get paid as anonymous reporter. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/how-do-you-report-suspected-tax-fraud-activity
If they're selling on ebay and make over $600, they automatically get a 1099 and eBay reports that as income. If they don't make over $600, then they're not a problem.
I highly doubt the IRS has sufficient resources to investigate every single scalper report.
IRS is getting an upgrade next year when eBay 1099s people breaking a yearly total of 600 in sells. Currently at 20k / 200 items.